Missing woman's husband pleaded guilty in December to assaulting her

In the earth-toned home perched on a leafy bend of the Conodoguinet Creek, Rabihan and Hap Seiders sat at the kitchen table last summer arguing about money when Rabihan pushed her soup away, causing it to spill.

Hap stood and punched his wife repeatedly in the head with a closed fist, leaving her with injuries that required treatment at a local medical facility.

DAN MILLER, The Patriot-NewsThe Seiders shared this house next to Willow Mill Park in Silver Spring Township.

In December, Hap Seiders pleaded guilty in county court to a misdemeanor charge of simple assault and was sentenced to pay the costs of prosecution and a $300 fine.

Investigators aren't calling Hap Seiders a suspect or even a person of interest in the disappearance of his 53-year-old wife, who often went by Rabihan Hasanova Seiders.

But the two have had a stormy relationship, based on police and Cumberland County Court records.

So much so that in July 2011, Seiders threatened to kill his wife and told her he would “dispose of her body in the river in many pieces,” Rabihan told the court as part of a protection-from-abuse filing.

On Tuesday, 23 FBI agents assisted local police in searching the semirural property that Hap and Rabihan shared in the 100 block of Willow Mill Park Road in Silver Spring Twp. bordering the Conodoguinet Creek.

It isn’t known what agents and officers were looking for. The search warrant filed with the Cumberland County sheriff’s office has been sealed.

However, Silver Spring Twp. Police Superintendent Richard Hammon said the searchers combed the property, using sickles to slash high grass and weeds that has grown in nonlandscaped areas along the creek.

“We were searching the property inside and outside,” he said.

Hammon said evidence was turned over to a lab for evaluation. Results could take two weeks or more, he said.

While Hammon refused to identify a suspect or suspects, he said investigators don’t know where the 59-year-old Seiders is and were not looking for him.

Hammon said Rabihan Seiders’ sister called police from her Philadelphia home in late March to report that her sister was missing. Police issued a release seeking information, saying Rabihan, a native of the former Soviet Union, hadn’t been seen since March 27.

Messages left for Hap Seiders were not returned Wednesday. And a man walking outside the Seiders’ home Wednesday afternoon told a reporter to leave the property. The man would not give his name or provide further comment.

When contacted at her home in another Silver Spring Twp. neighborhood, Bonnie Burd, Hap Seiders’ sister with whom he lived last summer, said her brother wasn’t there and refused to comment further.

Rabihan Seiders filed for the PFA in September, less than a month after she made a 911 call Aug. 30 that brought police to the home the couple shared next to Willow Mill Park.

Rabihan Seiders, in court filings, said the Aug. 30 kitchen table incident wasn’t the first time her husband had resorted to violence against her. She described a history, during the couple’s marriage, of Seiders threatening her and physically abusing her by punching, kicking, pulling her hair and choking her, filings state.

The papers that Rabihan Seiders filed state that firearms were not involved in the incidents and that Seiders did not own a gun. The county sheriff’s office would not say whether Seiders has a license to own a gun, saying those records are not open to the public.

Other Cumberland County records show that a marriage license was granted to the couple in October 2009. Hap and Rabihan Seiders each had two previous unsuccessful marriages.

Rabihan Seiders lived in Atlantic City, N.J., at the time, but was born in the former Soviet Union. She was a teacher who had completed five years of college at the time of the marriage.

Hap Seiders had his own description of the relationship in court records, one that accused his wife of going after his money.

In October, papers filed by a lawyer on Hap Seiders’ behalf contended that Hasanova Seiders had drilled open a safe in their house and removed what he believed to be “a substantial collection of gold coins and other collectibles.”

He claimed Rabihan Seiders took an advance of more than $2,000 on his credit card and that she withdrew money from his personal checking account without his permission.

Rabihan Seiders, in a response filed by her lawyer, denied the allegations. She said the credit card was in her name and that she withdrew the money from a joint account, which Hap Seider then closed to prevent her from having financial support. In the same filing, Rabihan Seiders said she came into the marriage bringing “very little” of her own.

According to court records, Rabihan Seiders’ name was put on the deed of the residence on Willow Mill Park Road after the couple married.

Seiders and Seiders, a Pennsylvania general partnership, bought the house and the 2.9-acre property for $385,000 in September 2003, according to the deed recorded in Cumberland. Yet no mortgage exists on the property, indicating that no money was borrowed to make the purchase. The property is assessed at $410,000, and Zillow.com lists its current market value at $414,000.

The protection-from-abuse order that Guido signed in September was to grant Hap Seiders sole possession of the residence 30 days after he paid Rabihan Seiders $36,000. Seiders was required to keep making $3,000 monthly payments to Rabihan Seiders or risk being evicted from the residence, under terms of the order. In November, a judge vacated the protection-from-abuse order.

Now the house overlooking the bend in the creek is on the verge of being sold because of unpaid taxes.

Nearly $7,000 is owed on the house in 2010 delinquent property taxes. Another $5,400 is unpaid from 2011. An official in the county tax office said the property would be listed for tax sale if the 2010 taxes are not paid by September.